"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."-- Douglas Adams

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

GE Slimline 292674 Single Line Corded Phone

Note: This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

The phone for my land line wouldn’t be a big deal except that cell
phones don’t like to work in my house. I do spend a lot of time in my
room either watching television or writing reviews. On the rare
occasions where I need to buy a phone, I try to get one with caller ID. I
don’t really need speed dial, as I know the few numbers that I need to
know. (You know… work, friends, 900 numbers… er, um … I mean pizza
delivery.)

I came across the 29267 when I was looking to get a
new phone. My primary concern was price, really. I need a phone. As I
stated, the only thing it needs to do is identify calls. I also wanted
something with a cord. Wireless phones tend to be more of a pain than
anything. As long as it can hear the person on the other end, though, I
won‘t go back asking for a refund.

That’s not to say I don’t have
complaints. When I get an incoming call, it’s hard to read the display.
This has a lot to do with the positioning of the phone, though. The
cord that goes into the wall from the phone is just short enough that I
have to keep it on the edge of my desk. I have to lean over pretty far
to see the display. Now, there really aren’t many people that I’m
avoiding, but I don’t like telemarketers and people that do surveys. I
like to let unidentified 800 numbers go to voicemail if I can help it.

As
with other phones that have caller ID, cell phones will often be
displayed as a city and state. Thus, if you don’t have your friends’
phone numbers committed to memory, you may have to take a chance once in
a while. With land lines, the phone goes by whoever’s name is on the
bill. Thus, if it’s a company’s line, the company’s name will appear on
the caller ID. Not a problem if your significant other works in the same
office every day.

If you need to call someone back, it’s pretty
easy to scroll down the list of recent numbers and find the number. It
even displays time and date so that you can more easily tell which
number someone called from. If you want to dial using the phone’s
memory, you have a dial button you can press. Once dials the number with
the one, area code and phone number. A second press gets rid of the
one. A third press gets rid of the area code. The next press starts
over. (I don’t really know what you’re supposed to do if you need to
dial a one and no area code.)

If you need to delete the numbers,
perhaps to clean up redundant entries, you can delete them by pressing
the button marked ‘delete’. I don’t know if there’s any way to delete
all the numbers at once. I guess you just have to go through them one by
one. The phone can store 50 numbers, so you’ll be in for a workout.

As
you may recall, I mentioned that the phone stores the numbers with time
and date. Don’t worry about setting the time and date, as the phone
takes care of this with the first incoming call. If you’re not a popular
person, you have two options. You can either be patient and wait or you
can call yourself from a friends house just to get the time set up. I
don’t use this phone to tell time, so I was more than willing to be
patient.

You do need 4 AA batteries if you want to use the caller
ID. Without the batteries, the phone still works. You just won’t be
able to tell who’s calling. I’ve noticed that the batteries don’t need
changing on caller ID phones. The last one I had needed new batteries
once. I’ve had this one for at least a year, I think, and I don’t recall
the batteries ever going out.

The cord that it comes with that
goes from the base to the handset isn’t very long, but it’s enough to go
from where the phone sits to where I sit. Normally, this isn’t an
issue. Sometimes, the cord tangles and the phone falls, but it has yet
to break or get seriously damaged. It still works.

Overall, I’d
give the phone four stars. It’s not spectacular. It won’t give you
winning lottery numbers or cook breakfast for you. It’s just a phone.
But it has served me well.